Monday, Apr 21, 2003
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By P. S. Suryanarayana
A SARS patient receiving treatment in an isolation ward at a hospital in Guangzhou, Southern China, on Sunday.
While no reasons were formally cited, it was obvious that they were being held responsible for China's lurch towards the SARS crisis. The death toll in China is now put at 79, while the fatality figure in its Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong has climbed to 88, with seven more persons succumbing to the scourge today. The clean-up drive on the streets of Hong Kong was sustained for yet another day even as the city struggled to come to grips with a major public health disaster. Singapore, too, remained in a state of high SARS alert, with people being advised to utilise, if need be, a telephone hotline set up for this purpose. The death toll in Singapore on this count is placed at 14 out of 177 cases. The possibility of SARS being the cause of two other fatalities is still under investigation. For the moment, China's Health Minister, Zhang Wenkang, and the Mayor of Beijing, Meng Xuenong, remain in their respective official positions, but the CPC's action against them for mishandling the crisis is seen in the Asia Pacific diplomatic circles as a political reprimand at the least. The general inference is that the action by the CPC may well be a prelude to the dismissal of these two functionaries from their official positions as well. One of them was the Secretary of the CPC unit within the Health Ministry, while the other was the Deputy Secretary of the party within the Beijing Municipal Committee. China's political display of firmness and transparency has come in the wake of the World Health Organisation's decision to publicise its displeasure over the manner in which the epidemic was being handled including in the military hospitals. The WHO is now understood to be pleased with the action (as distinct from the inspection tours and exhortations by the President and the Prime Minister). China's State Council today announced the cancellation of the traditional week-long May Day holidays so that the possible spread could be averted during the period which, in the normal course, would be marked by mass travel by people within the country. Explaining the reasons for China's apparent failure to have been more definitive so far, the Executive Vice-Minister, Gao Qiang, said at a press conference in Beijing today that the sheer novelty of the disease and the logistical difficulties of collecting information from varied types of hospitals should account for the latest update in SARS-related figures. The number of confirmed cases in mainland China was now put at 1,807 (a jump of several hundreds). In Beijing alone, the number of confirmed cases was estimated to be 339, with another 402 being placed in the category of suspected cases. So far, 18 patients had died in Beijing. The incidence of SARS among the foreigners in Beijing was said to be confined to five confirmed patients and four other suspected cases.
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